“Troublesome Ted”: Ted Cruz Is The Symptom, Not The Disease
Ted Cruz seems to be becoming something of a Republican bogeyman. One can imagine Republican lawmakers trudging home and telling their recalcitrant kids that if they don’t brush their teeth and go to bed, Ted Cruz is going to bring a mob of torch-bearing tea partiers over to take them away. But they should remember that Ted Cruz is a particularly irritating symptom, not the problem.
So per the San Francisco Chronicle (h/t Hot Air’s Allahpundit), House Republicans lay the blame for immigration reform stalling in their chamber at … Cruz’s feet:
Then there was the debt ceiling near-fiasco – or, depending on your point of view, actual fiasco – this week. The House passing the clean debt ceiling suspension teed up Senate Republicans perfectly: They could all vote against the legislation but it would still pass. The GOP would avoid crashing the economy but still get an issue with which to beat Democrats.
It was Cruz who put the kibosh on that plan, compelling a 60-vote threshold for passage (as is his prerogative as a senator), prompting the vote to last an hour before GOP leaders Mitch McConnell (facing a serious primary) and John Cornyn (facing a farcical primary) fell on their proverbial swords and cast the votes necessary to nudge the majority north of 60.
These antics have won Cruz no friends among Senate GOPers, but as Byron York points out today, he’s a cipher for a particularly problematic part of the party:
Many in the GOP believe Cruz is just out for himself. But even if that’s true, they have to remember that he represents more than just Ted Cruz. There are a lot of Republicans — it’s not clear how many, but a significant portion of the party’s base — that cheers Cruz on when he battles with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They want to see a Republican throw a wrench in the Washington spending machine, even if it creates chaos and damages the GOP’s standing with independent voters. And it is that conviction that is really behind the party’s problems; it is why Republicans would not enjoy smooth sailing even if Cruz were to retire tomorrow.
Cruz is adept at whipping up that section of the GOP and is equally skilled at self-promotion. But make no mistake: He’s riding a wave of sentiment, not causing it. If there was no Ted Cruz someone else would fill that role; it might be someone in the Congress, like Utah Sen. Mike Lee, or it might be one of the professionally aggrieved outside conservative groups like Heritage Action or the Senate Conservatives Fund, who know a rich fundraising vein when they see one.
As Hot Air’s Allahpundit writes:
So go ahead, GOPers, roll your eyes at Troublesome Ted. But remember that there are many more where he came from.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, February 14, 2014
“Always Pick Door Number 2”: The Lessons Of John Boehner’s Latest Failure
A last-ditch plan by House Republicans to extract concessions in exchange for hiking the nation’s borrowing limit fell apart Tuesday morning, with conservative holdouts leaving the party short of the necessary votes.
That the GOP caved isn’t as surprising as the speed with which it did, just a few minutes into a morning conference meeting. All along, it was clear Republicans had no leverage with their debt-ceiling threats; they’d caved before, and public opinion was firmly against more debt limit extortion.
Still, the GOP’s latest debt ceiling defeat is yet another sign of how difficult it has become for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to move anything through his divided caucus. And Boehner’s inability to control his party is a real liability, as it’s given Democrats even less reason to concede ground in future negotiations — not only on the debt ceiling, but on other major issues as well.
Even after Republicans self immolated during last year’s debt ceiling negotiations by offering a fantastical hostage list, the party again wanted to extract some kind of concessions this time. But though the ask list was smaller, the party again couldn’t agree on a single plan, and a handful of proposals quickly collapsed. In a weird Bizarro World twist, the last idea — to restore pension benefits to some veterans — would have had Republicans either voting to raise spending, or voting against the military.
In the end, the potential damage to the GOP was so great that party leaders knew they had two options on the debt ceiling: Stand firm and destroy the party’s approval rating (again), or ask Democrats for help. Boehner gave the finger to the Tea Party and picked Door Number 2.
So now, Democrats and President Obama, who insisted throughout the ordeal that they would only support a clean debt ceiling vote, have watched the GOP cave once again. When Republicans return with more debt ceiling demands in the future, Democrats will surely be emboldened to shrug them off and say “nope” again, confident the demands are merely more empty threats.
But will Boehner keep bucking the right wing? Immigration offers a salient test case, with Boehner seemingly interested in passing some reforms, and conservative critics blasting any action as “amnesty.”
The fallout for Republicans from spiking immigration this year wouldn’t be as visceral as the damage from, say, the government shutdown. But it would give Democrats a huge talking point — “Republicans are anti-immigration” — and further impinge on the party’s ability to court minority voters.
In short, Boehner is, as he has been for some time, caught between his need to appease the right and his need to do his job. The latest debt ceiling brouhaha has only exposed how tricky that balancing act is, and shown Democrats that, with a little pressure, they can force him to dump the right and seek out their help.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 11, 2014
“Don’t Bank On It”: Can Republicans Govern If They Win In 2014?
What’s the worst-case scenario for Republicans in November? Maybe victory.
A Republican takeover of the Senate is somewhere between plausible and very likely. (If you want more exact predictions, you have to provide a less volatile political climate.) So for argument’s sake, let’s assume Republican candidates roll to victory from Alaska to North Carolina. The Democrats’ 54-46 Senate majority is supplanted by a narrower Republican majority, with Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell or someone of nearly equal skill installed as majority leader.
The Republicans would then control both the House and the Senate. In the Senate, the most enthusiastic partisans in the new majority would be eager to dispense with the filibuster on legislation, allowing bills to pass on party-line Republican votes. Let’s assume that happens, too.
What exactly would they do with these newfound powers?
They wouldn’t pass a jobs bill because they don’t want President Barack Obama to gain credit for an improving economy. Besides, they’ve convinced themselves that jobs bills don’t work — at least until a Republican occupies the White House.
What about health care legislation? Jonathan Bernstein parses the prospects on his blog. According to a CBS News poll in January, only 34 percent of Americans support repealing Obamacare; it would be a nonstarter even if the health care and insurance industries weren’t already too far down the Obamacare road. If Republicans took the plunge to create legislation, the real-world impacts of their proposals would be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and outside policy groups. It’s hard to imagine what Republicans could devise that would satisfy their ideological needs without undermining health security for millions while increasing the deficit. There’s a reason they keep talking about health care but never get around to doing anything.
How about immigration? Senate legislation drafted by Republicans would look nothing like the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate last June. Senate Democrats would have little incentive to support a vastly more conservative bill, which would rely even more on employment enforcement and militarization of the border while offering far-less-generous terms to undocumented immigrants. Under such circumstances, House Democrats would surely abandon House Republicans to their own devices, as well.
Without Democratic votes, the House cannot pass anything more comprehensive than an immigration crackdown. The fate of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. would be unresolved at best. The political failure would be a fiasco, further undermining Republicans among Hispanic and Asian voters while simultaneously opening the door to another round of nativist big-talk among Republican presidential hopefuls. (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce would express its heartfelt disappointment, then funnel millions of dollars to Republican incumbents.)
The party’s internal conflicts would all be exacerbated by a Senate takeover. Imagine, for example, how much leverage a narrow Republican majority would grant to Senator Ted Cruz — and the chaos that could ensue.
In its current incarnation, the party is more or less an anti-tax lobby grafted to a Sons of the Confederacy chapter. Genuine areas of policy consensus among Republicans are few — spending cuts for the poor, tax cuts for the rich and promotion of incumbent dirty energy industries at the expense of Obama’s green agenda. None of these is popular. (Although in coal and oil states the energy reversal would be welcome. Keystone, too, if its construction is not already underway in 2015.) All would face probable Obama vetoes.
What’s left? Entitlement reform? The Republicans’ elderly base is not eager for changes in Medicare or Social Security. That leaves culture warrior stuff, mostly. New abortion restrictions, perhaps? One last lunge against gay rights? Not much electoral magic there.
The party’s capacity to please its right-wing cultural base, its anti-tax, anti-regulatory donor base and a slim majority of American voters is almost nonexistent. Democratic control of the Senate has shielded Republicans both from their own divisions and from the unpopularity of their causes.
Indeed, it’s possible that the Boschian hellscape over which John Boehner presides in the 113th Congress could actually get uglier and more bizarre if Republicans win the Senate in the 114th. I’m not sure even these Republicans deserve that.
By: Francis Wilkinson, The National Memo, February 11, 2014
“GOP Take-No-Risks Approach Is Unraveling”: Wacko Birds Cloud Republicans’ Election Euphoria”
Some Republicans envisioned a successful rope-a-dope strategy for this year’s elections: Don’t make mistakes, and let the Democrats stew in the juices of Obamacare and a strapped middle class.
That take-no-risks approach is unraveling. Congressional Republicans are offering proposals on major matters, and the party’s right wing — whose members Senator John McCain called “wacko birds” — is omnipresent in Washington and across the U.S.
Congressional Republicans have introduced initiatives on immigration, health care, and economic mobility and poverty that are creating policy and political fissures. There were four separate Republican responses to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week.
House Speaker John Boehner wants his chamber to pass immigration reform. Any compromise that is acceptable to Hispanic and Asian-American groups draws fire from the party’s sizable nativist bloc and political consultants who don’t want to divert attention from their campaign against health care reform. The Speaker’s task is enormously complicated, the prospects uphill.
On health care, three leading Republican senators recently offered an alternative to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, one they say is more market-centric. But fewer people would be covered, the prohibition on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions would be weakened, and the authors already are backing away from a proposal to deny tax benefits for some employer-based plans. Many Democrats would relish a debate over the competing plan.
Florida senator Marco Rubio, a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, took on economic inequality by proposing to expand the earned income tax credit for poor people without children; Obama cited Rubio’s proposal while offering a similar one during his State of the Union address. Rubio deserves credit for trying, but he has gotten tripped up in the specifics: whether the costs should be offset by other reductions in the tax break for the working poor or whether the entire credit should be reshaped.
And the wacko birds are flocking, with a special eye on women and gays.
On women, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee wasn’t an outlier with his claim that Democrats believe women can’t control their libidos. Ken Buck, the right-wing Senate candidate in Colorado and a cancer survivor, inexplicably suggested pregnancy was like cancer. This is the same man who in a 2010 race — when his opponent was a woman — said people should vote for him because “I don’t wear high heels.” He also compared being gay to being an alcoholic.
Then there is the always -provocative Texas congressman Louie Gohmert, who said judges who rule in favor of same-sex marriage “need some basic plumbing lessons.” Or Randy Weber, his fellow Texas representative, who tweeted before the State of the Union that he was waiting for the “Kommandant-in-Chef,” who he called “The Socialistic dictator who’s been feeding US a line or is it ’A-Lying?’” Taxpayers pay Weber $174,000 a year.
Out in the provinces, the right-wing base is restless. The Arizona Republican Party recently censured McCain for leftist tendencies. In a few months, state party platforms will be drafted; keep your eye on Texas, where Republicans have called for the elimination of 16 federal cabinet departments or agencies and have come out against promoting “critical thinking” skills in education.
In Iowa, some activists are plotting to dump the state’s moderately conservative lieutenant governor, Kim Reynolds, at the party’s convention. Governor Terry Branstad, a Republican who is likely to be re-elected, is the longest-serving U.S. governor, and there are expectations he will leave during his next term. Unless the ultra-right-wingers have their way, Reynolds then would become the state’s first female governor (Iowans have never elected a woman to the Senate or House, either).
Democrats have their own crazies on the left, but they aren’t as prevalent or influential.
History and polling data suggest Republicans should do well in November, keeping their House majority and with an outside shot at taking control of the Senate. But some of these big issues and the wacko birds could unsettle these prospects.
By: Al Hunt, The National Memo, February 2, 2014
“Is The GOP Giving Up Tea?”: It’s An Illusion For The GOP To Think Bashing Obamacare Is An Elixir
The botched rollout of the health-care law has called forth some good news: Republicans are so confident they can ride anti-Obamacare sentiment to electoral victory that they’re growing ever-more impatient with the tea party’s fanaticism. Immigration reform may be the result.
The GOP is looking like a person emerging from a long binge and asking, “Why did I do that?” The moment of realization came when last fall’s government shutdown cratered the party’s polling numbers. Staring into the abyss can be instructive. For the first time since 2010, the middle of the House Republican caucus — roughly 100 of its 233 members — began worrying less about primaries from right-wing foes and more about losing their majority status altogether.
Obamacare’s troubles reinforced the flight from the brink. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is telling his rank-and-file that they can win the 2014 elections simply by avoiding the stupid mistakes their more-ferocious colleagues keep urging them to make. In this view, the health insurance issue will take care of everything, provided Republicans end their tea party fling.
In fact, it’s an illusion for the GOP to think that bashing Obamacare is an elixir, especially if Democrats embrace and defend the law. Now that its benefits are fully kicking in, Republicans should be asked persistently, “Who do you want to throw off health insurance?”
Also: Do you want to go back to denying people coverage for preexisting conditions? And: What about those 3 million young adults now on their parents’ health plans? “Repeal Obamacare” is not as popular as it seems in GOP bastions. Some Republicans know this, which is why they are trying to cobble together much narrower alternatives to the law.
Nonetheless, some illusions are useful. Boehner is using them aggressively. The immigration principles he announced at his caucus’s retreat last week in Cambridge, Md., are a breakthrough because they are potentially more elastic than they sound. This is why many immigration reform advocates were elated, and why President Obama, sensing what was coming, offered not a hint of partisanship on the issue in his State of the Union address.
The principles have been loosely described as favoring the legalization of undocumented immigrants without a path to citizenship. But what the statement actually opposes is a “special path to citizenship” for the roughly 11 million who are here illegally. Everything hangs on the implications of that word “special.”
A bill barring a path to citizenship would be a nonstarter for Democrats — and it ought to be a nonstarter for Republicans and conservatives. Creating a vast population of legal residents who lack citizenship rights undercuts the rights of those who are already citizens. It would undermine the commitment of a democratic republic to equal treatment and self-rule.
But reform advocates inside and outside the Obama administration note that even without a “special” path, many immigrants, once legalized, could find ways of gaining citizenship eventually.
Changes in visa allocations, including more generous rules for the spouses and parents of citizens, could help as many as 4 million undocumented residents, as The Post’s Pamela Constable has reported. Republicans have already signaled openness to a path for “dreamers” — their numbers are estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million — who were brought to the United States illegally as children. The bill already passed by the Senate would put as many as 8 million people on a path to citizenship. A compromise that found “non-special” ways of reaching a number reasonably close to the Senate’s is now at least possible.
It’s also possible, of course, that Boehner could make a play to improve his party’s image with Latinos by appearing to be flexible at the outset but in the end appease hard-liners by balking on a final bill — and try to blame Democrats for not compromising enough. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that passage of a bill was “clearly in doubt.”
But the GOP consists of more than the tea party. Both business interests and conservative evangelical leaders really want a reform law. Most of the intra-party tiffs have been over tactics: whether to use shutdowns or debt-ceiling fights to achieve shared objectives. The immigration battle, by contrast, will expose more fundamental rifts among party constituencies along philosophical lines.
None of this heralds the dawn of a new Moderate Republican Age. Shifts in the Republican primary electorate and the tea party insurgency dragged the party so far to the right that it will take a long time to bring it within hailing distance of the middle of the road. But change has to start somewhere, and the GOP’s slow retreat from the fever swamps may turn out to be one of Obamacare’s utterly unintended effects.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 2, 2014
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